Chapter Text
The number one rule of running a convenience store in the inner city is that if you saw someone steal bare essentials, no ya fucking didn’t.
Shit happened. Bills racked up, wages were cut, people got sick. You never knew why someone felt the need to lift a few cans of soup, but you sure as hell didn’t ask. Phil saw enough in his line of work to realize that it never hurt to help out in your community here and there. Everyone deserved food security, and to be treated like actual fucking human beings for that matter. It wasn’t a wild epiphany by any means, but day in and day out he could never understand the wealth inequality that dominated his city and many others like it.
When he watched that scrawny kid walk through the door on the late shift, Phil already knew he had some business to mind. It was quarter to six and he had about four more hours until closing time. The foot traffic was a little slow from how many people were home eating with their families, but something about the concerningly thin arms poking out from the boy’s red and white baseball tee told him that the kid in front of him hadn’t had a consistent meal cycle in quite some time. He wore a beat-up pair of jeans with holes in the knees that looked anything but intentional, and the backpack slung over his shoulder sadly wasn’t convincing enough that this child was receiving a proper education. He was just a boy. Barely even a teen if Phil had to guess. It broke his heart.
Phil himself was lucky enough to make a decent living from his little store, but he knew what it was like to grow up food insecure as a foster kid. After the usual expenses, a few protection fees and paying Ian along with a couple other employees, Phil had enough money to live comfortably in his small flat above the store and put a little away into savings each month. As a college dropout, he was doing better than the world ever expected of him and Phil was damn grateful for it. There were so, so many times when he had to rely on the kindness of absolute strangers to have a fighting chance in life and Phil was determined to pay it forward.
“Hiya, mate. Can I help you with anything?” he asked, just in case. Being polite could go further than people gave it credit for. Even if all he felt comfortable asking for was a fiver for the bus or something.
The boy’s eyes flicked to him, scanning, judging, learning, “No thanks, I’m not looking for anything in particular,” he dismissed. Phil didn’t know what the outcome was, but he mustn’t have been that off-putting considering he didn’t immediately turn around and leave the store.
Giving the lad an affirmative nod, which was returned to him stiffly, Phil employed his secret talent of watching the CCTV footage out of the corner of his eye while appearing heavily invested in restocking the lottery tickets for the counter. The monitor showed nearly every angle of the store on a continuous split-screen. Including the back of his own head, which made it slightly obvious when the kid did a lap of the store, subtly checking out each of the camera locations and glancing back at Phil every so often. He just kept his head down and made sure to keep his hands moving to appear busy.
To be honest it was hard to focus on literally anything else. He couldn’t casually start sweeping the aisles now that the foot traffic was down because if that kid got scared off and went hungry it’d be on him. Now he was trapped behind the desk with fuck all else to do except twiddle his thumbs and try not to look at the boy casting him quick glances every five seconds.
Once he lingered out of Phil’s immediate field of view, he could allow himself to look directly at the monitor for an extended period of time. The kid stood at the cereal section, nervously glancing around as he built up the nerve from what Phil could see. His camera quality was sort of shit all things considered, so it was a little hard to nail down the body language. Something he could see, however, was the moment the kid took off their backpack and swiftly unzipped the largest section. A sizable box of Cheerios was stuffed down into the bag before it was put back on and worn normally like nothing happened. A food stash, then. Cereals were easy carbs and didn’t mould as quickly as a loaf of bread might. Because it was small and dry, it could be hidden in a multitude of containers and places. As if Phil needed any more confirmation that his food insecurity was long-term.
Phil shook his head, solemnly resigning himself to stay out of it as he went back to puttering with useless things behind the counter. He couldn’t save everyone, he just had to do his part. The boy came back around the corner, not even sparing Phil a second glance as he pushed his way through the door.
He played dumb, “Oh, see ya later, then!”
It made a pleasant chime, let in some noise from passing traffic, and that was it. He was gone. It was hard to say if they’d ever cross paths again.
For the rest of his shift, the face of the gaunt child lingered in his head as he went through the motions of working the cash. How old was he? Eleven? Twelve?” Too fucking young was for certain. Phil was used to seeing the effects of poverty, but that was a literal fucking child. It was hard to forget that shit when he’d been there and all he had to distract himself was the continuous hum of refrigerators and whoever showed up to buy junk food and soda.
Ten o’clock rolled around painfully slowly and Phil flipped the sign from open to closed with bone-deep exhaustion. He loved his store, no question, but sometimes a shift could take it out of him and tonight was a prime example. Phil counted the money, vaguely noting down the shrink (lost inventory) and putting the money in the back safe. Cleaning up was arguably the easiest part of the night. He could play his favourite music on the store speakers and use the simple work as an easy way to decompress.
Once everything was in place for Ian’s opening shift at six, Phil locked up and began the long and treacherous journey home. Okay, that might’ve been a stretch. He went on the short and barely noticeable trip around the back to get to a set of stairs built into the side of the building that led up to his flat. As far as work-life balances went, it wasn’t super great, but the commute meant that he could just roll out of bed at two thirty PM and be ready for his shift by three. It was wicked for a homebody like himself because the schedule meant that he could stay up until sunrise dominating Halo lobbies and talking shit without any neighbours complaining about the noise.
Which is exactly what he did.
— — —
Tommy hit the motherload.
He just waltzed in, like an absolute badass, got his cereal for the agreeable price of free and fucked off like he’d never been there. The senile bastard behind the counter didn’t even see him in the act, which meant that Tommy could go for round two whenever he got low again. He was an absolute prodigy in the art of shoplifting. A dirty crime boy through and through- no, a dirty crime man- who would go to sleep significantly less hungry that night thanks to his hard-earned winnings. Being his own boss and shit.
The leftover buzz from stealing made the slowly darkening streets less unbearable for him. Tommy walked with a bounce in his step that occasionally shook the cereal box in his bag as a pleasant reminder of his victory as he wound his way through trash-lined alleys and sidewalks that were nearly polka-dotted with dirty, flattened gum. This part of town was an absolute shithole, but beggars couldn’t be choosers in the most literal sense, and it was nothing he wasn’t used to already. In a fucked kind of way, he liked it there. It was one of the only places in L’Manburg where he could just exist without being immediately looked down upon.
Homeless was a strong word. Using it felt sorta invalidating to the actual homeless people he knew. Regardless, there were many places Tommy could sleep tonight, but in a house wasn’t one of them. It was a Friday, which meant his foster mom was trying out this really cutting-edge parenting technique called locking all the doors and going out on an all-night rager which would inevitably end up rough when she got back with the equivalent of drain cleaner in her veins. If he really wanted to, he could stick around and find out, but that got old quick within the first two weeks of his placement. She was generally tolerable when she was gone all day working at that stupid call center, so Tommy had a house like 60% of the time when she wasn’t home to scream and kick him out. So maybe he was part time homeless. Way different.
Will and Techno, on the other hand, they were full-timers. Metal as fuck if you asked him. Tommy was on his way to a condemned house they were holed up in as of late. It was supposed to be some sort of cute bungalow in the seventies, but time was not kind to the fuckin’ crack shack it was now. Honestly, it was a miracle that it was still standing, but Tommy had to respect that it was in such a shit condition and location that it scared off companies and gentrifying house flippers alike. If anything, being rejected for its age and rough shape was par for the course for the three of them after growing out of their cute and adoptable age.
At least he was self aware enough to know that they weren’t special. L’Manburg wasn’t exactly known for its amount of wealth and while it wasn’t particularly known for its poverty either, that was only because of the amount of P.R. work done by the city to make it more appealing to tourism. It was always, ‘we got blown up three times! Check out our war monuments and museums!’ and never ‘our city has a lot of poverty and addiction because our economy is fueled by drug empires that date back before any of the fucking wars’. Seriously, Wilbur talked his fucking ear off about the widescale setbacks of intergenerational trauma. Fuck, those were big words. Point is, the whole place was fucked long before any of them were born.
Once upon a time, none of them were homeless. Sure they were all cooped in a shit group house, but there was generally a guarantee of food, water, and somewhere to sleep even if it was cramped. It all went to shit about a year ago when Will aged out. He was essentially dropped off on a street corner and told to have a good life now that his foster “Parents” couldn’t make money off him. Even though he was three years younger, Techno ran away to stay with him not even a day after. Tommy wanted to go with them, he really did, but the cops just labelled him a problem child and dragged him back each time until he ended up with fucking Linda. It was fine. When the water bill was paid on time, he could usually sneak Will and Techno in for a quick shower and refill for their bottles. It was the barren fridge that left him feeling the most helpless.
Loose gravel crunched under his shoes as the effort put into upkeeping the sidewalks became gradually nonexistent. Finding such an abandoned gem without there being other people in it already meant the house was a bit of a trek from the developed areas of town. It wasn’t like Tommy had anywhere to be, so he kept going, kicking around a random Coke can as he went. He stopped at a rusted chain link fence and made a quick turn off the beaten path, trailing along until he found a gap made by a scraggly ass tree growing through it. Life found a way, alright. It just wasn’t pretty.
Tommy knocked on the back door, avoiding the spots where the old grey paint was bubbled and chipped by the elements, “You fucks home?”
Moving quietly just wasn’t possible in a place that fucking old. He could hear each one of Wilbur’s footsteps as he approached, creaking on brittle wooden floors as if the house protested their general existence. Tough luck bitch, they were used to it. None of them had a key, per se. But the deadbolt still worked for the inside and provided at least some illusion of privacy, even if it was fucking loud as Wilbur unlocked it.
“It’s late. I had to convince Techno not to go find you,” he sighed, standing aside for Tommy to come in.
“Aww, were you doubting me, Technobitch?” Tommy called, locking eyes with his brother, who leaned on a peeling wall in what used to be a living room.
He squinted, “It’s only ‘cause I don’t trust you to make smart decisions on your own.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked, swinging his backpack on the ground so he could open it, “How about you eat your fuckin’ words.”
Literally. He pulled out the box of Cheerios like it was a gun, holding it sideways and making a few dramatic shooting motions that shook the cereal to make his gunfire noises, “I picked this up at a convenience store not too far from here. You’re welcome,” he grinned tossing him the cereal before flopping on the “couch”. It was three cushions they stole off an actual couch someone left on the road. They couldn’t take the whole thing, so that was all they had. “Let’s just eat.”
Dry cereal wasn’t actually that shit once you’d had a lot of it. It tasted like actual sawdust if sawdust was sweet and crunchy and loved you. Dehydration was its only apparent drawback to them, so they had to open the bottles of tap water Tommy brought from Linda’s. Each of them claimed a cushion and passed the food and water back and forth until everyone had their fill.
“So where’d you get this, again? I thought you ran out of cash,” Techno asked, skeptically.
He took a moment to finish his chew, not wanting to accidentally inhale cheerio dust, “Stole it. That place called, um… Philza’s Convenience. There’s usually shit tons of people there, but I showed up at a good time.”
Techno had genuine concern in his eyes. Linda’s groceries were never consistent, but recently she’d been eating out every meal without even looking at the cupboards. “That bad?”
“...Yeah.”
Clearing his throat, Wilbur tried changing the topic, “So, how was it? Were you safe?”
“Yeah, he was pretty distracted the whole time. They have all kinds of shit tho, I would’ve got more if I wasn’t so jumpy.”
There was a silent agreement between all of them not to say dumb shit like ‘don’t steal ’ or ‘you’re too young for that’. Not only was it shallow as hell, but Tommy was a big, hungry man who had to look out for himself sometimes. It’s just how the world worked. If he had the luxury of acting his age, they wouldn’t be in that rickety old place to begin with. Tommy didn’t even know what grade he should be in at this point. He had bigger problems than the area of a cylinder or what the inside of a frog looked like.
Even when he was in school, it didn’t really do it for him. Moving around so much decimated any chance of having substantially lasting friendships. He was an outcast and the fastest way to get people to like him was to make the teachers hate him. Disruptive behaviour tanked his grades, ruined his free time and made whatever foster he had absolutely sick of being called in by the time he ‘wasn’t a good fit’ for them anymore. Bullshit. They only fostered him back then because he was remotely young and adults didn’t understand the concept that respect had to be earned and not given.
That didn’t stop Wilbur and Techhno from wanting to make sure he was safe.
“Maybe we can check it out tomorrow, then,” Techno hummed, grabbing another fistful from the bag.
“Any luck with that resume?” he asked Wilbur, only half paying attention. He found out that if he licked one side of a cheerio it would stick to another one. Tommy kept stacking them into small towers before eating them whole.
Technically, Wilbur was the only one of them allowed to work. He wasn’t on the run or under the legal working age like Tommy. He was also the only one who graduated high school, so he was uniquely more qualified than him or Techno, but that didn’t make him up to par with the general population. Getting a hold of his papers was nearly impossible, but they used Linda’s place for a mailing address and eventually had enough to get some ID together.
Running a hand through his hair, Wilbur shook his head, “Not yet, Sunshine.”
None of them pressed further. He’d been trying to hand out his resume to local businesses, but he didn’t exactly have a phone number or email for people to get back to him with. It was hard to be anyone’s first choice with an obstacle like that.
Adjusting for Tommy’s presence was as simple as getting out the extra sleeping bag. Their situation was better than most in their shoes, but it still got cold at night. Any wiring had long been cannibalized for copper, and the windows were boarded up by the previous owners, so it got dark quickly. The most they could do was curl up and try to sleep.